Amateur hour in the sunshine state

Appearing on Fox News Sunday in a segment titled “Can the Trump campaign move past distractions?” Lewandowski was asked about a prosecutor’s decision last week to not bring the Trump aide to court on a battery charge stemming from a run-in with a reporter in the state. But in response, Lewandowski pivoted to criticize the state’s Republican party and its process for selecting convention delegates.

He accused Republican Party of Florida Chairman Blaise Ingoglia of being overtly biased against Trump, prompting an angry call from Ingoglia to the campaign, sources tell POLITICO.

“The chairman of the party of Florida, who is an avid and outward supporter of Marco Rubio, gets to appoint 30 of those delegates,” Lewandowski said. “Now, I understand those are the rules but Donald Trump won. … And now, you’ve got a person who is supporting Marco Rubio who gets to appoint 30 of the 99 delegates.”

Lewandowski’s comments were wrong on three counts: Ingoglia remained neutral before and after the state’s March 15 GOP primary; the chairman doesn’t “appoint” any delegates; and the chairman is in charge of recommending 15 — not “30 of the 99” — delegates to the state executive committee. 

Lewandowski also incorrectly said Trump won Florida’s March 15 winner-take-all primary “by 23 points over all of his competitors.” Trump’s margin over second-place Rubio was 19 percentage points.